Article on the Reasons Why and How You Should Blog

Again, I am writing a series of posts on the benefits of blogging to enhance your job search and networking ablilites. The idea is to increase your web presence, and to broadcast to interested parties about your expertise. Provided that your content is compelling, and contains useful information relevant to your career field, this will increase your credibility amongst your colleagues.
My personal feelings are that the web 2.0 experience is steadliy gaining traction in the job search and networking world. If you are searching for a new job, or know that you may do so in the future, creating an online presence can be a godsend. The traditional model of sending your resume to companies and posting your resume online is still useful, but is becoming less relevant as time goes on. It is more efficient for some companies to search for people on the internet by visiting blogs, social networking sites, and personal websites. Most recruiters I know, have become very savvy in the art of searching for people by combing these different sites.
Anyway, I have linked an article I read on Silicon Alley Insider about how and why you should start a blog. The article is slanted more towards those that are starting a business or a company, but many of the principles apply to your own personal blog you may keep.

As always, I am interested in hearing your feedback!

James

http://www.businessinsider.com/should-you-blog-yep-and-heres-how-2010-3

Chartbeat: Blog Analytics

As a continuation of this theme of creating internet content, I read another interesting article on a new (to me) blog performance tracker on SAI. For those that have started a new blog and would like to track the performace of your blog, you might want to read this article from SAI about Chartbeat.

James

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-chartbeat-is-my-blog-performance-tracker-of-choice-2010-4

Increase Your Google Presence

Especially for students that are entering the workforce, it is important to get your name out there for potential employers and colleagues to see and recognize that you are a serious career professional. The importance of doing this increases in tough economic times like this. But a lot of students (and working professionals for that matter) have a lot of questions about how to do this. I always tell people to increase their presence by meeting people in-person and on-line on the internet. One way to increase your presence online is to create a blog or website. You have a lot of freedom in what material you choose to include, and how you go about posting it. But once you get some material down, how to do you get people to actually find and visit your online space? Google is an obvious answer. Despite a lot of competition, Google remains the top choice for people to search for content. Unfortunately, Google is very good about finding a lot of information--so much so, that your content can be buried with all the other information out there. This is where SEO metrics come into play--that art of getting your information found on Google searches. I have posted a link to an article I read on Silicon Alley Insider which gives a description of a few simple ways to get your page noticed. In other words, if I do a Google search on a topic related to your page, what steps can you take to increase the likelihood that your page will come up near the top of the search results rather than on page 10. This is an interesting read, I highly recommend it.

James

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-a-good-pagerank-2010-4

List of Social/Professional Networking Sites

LinkedIn, Ryze, and Meetup.com, are a few websites that are well-known and produce results for a number of people. They are certainly the go-to websites for a large number of people out there. I highly recommend using those sites if you haven't already signed up.
As always, I am looking for more information, and new resources that might be able to help myself or others. I stumbled across a few new websites when doing a search the other day. I also found this list of websites on Wikipedia's website. There may be some useful ones on the list.
Take a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

You can also click on the title of this article, which will take you directly to the same link.

James

Health Care Reform: Can't Live With It, Can't Live Without It

There has been much coverage over the past year on the health care debate. Most of the debate has been over the level of the government's role in providing accessible health care to Americans. The Obama administration has made health care reform a top priority, and this topic seems to have polarized Americans over just how the health care system should be overhauled. Should health care be mandated? Should the government provide an alternative to private health care coverage? Should benefits be extended to all residents, or only citizens? This is a complicated topic that includes many layers of delicate material and reaches many different industries, special interest groups, and populations.
Besides the obvious political implications, the decisions politicians make have, and will continue to have an effect on the job market now, and for years to come. One argument for universal government sponsored health care is that employers will have more options to provide health care benefits to employees. More options may mean lower costs to small to mid-size companies, that are currently getting hammered with rising costs. This also has implications on unemployment, and how quickly the job market improves. With so much uncertainty surrounding not only the economy, but the future of health care, there is a feeling that employers are waiting on the sidelines before they make decisions on whether to hire more employees. The data show that there is an increasing number of companies that are ready to hire, yet the actual number of new jobs does not match this information. In other words, employers are cautious, and waiting for more certainty before hiring again.
The moral of this story? Health care reform will have an impact on the job market.

Move Back In With Your Parents? How About Your Parents Moving in With You?

This is another interesting article I found on the Pew Research Center's website. I highly recommend you visit this website from time to time, as it has very interesting articles that follow trends in various themes such as economics, politics, education, foreign policy, etc.
This particular article talks about a recent trend that they attribute to the Great Recession. That is, that there is a growing trend of more than one generation of family living in one household. This can happen for several reasons, but there are certain cultural and economic trends that one must consider before making conclusions. Some cultures are more likely to live in a multigenerational household than others. Another factor is economics. People may live under one roof to save on rent or mortgage. This makes sense for some people as well, especially if grandparents are retired and available to provide childcare. This can be seen as a symbiotic relationship: the parents receive childcare from person(s) they trust. The grandparents may benefit from having a more affordable housing option (especially if they are on e fixed income), and they may be more likely to be connected with other people, so that they have more interaction with others. (a common problem for some elderly when they retire)
The economic factors are what this article focuses on. The Great Recession, as many people call it, may be a contributing factor to the growing incidence of multigenerational housing in the United States.
As always, click on the title at the top to follow the link to the article.

7 Things You Should Never Say to Your Boss

This is an article I ran across today that lists 7 things that you should never say to your boss. Now, there are probably more than 7 things that you should never say to your boss. And I don't typically recommend that you get your career or life advice from the rotation of the articles that appear on your Yahoo! page when signing in to read your email, but sometimes they are fun to read.
Click on the title up at the top to read the article.